“Wuthering Heights” Bronte in short summary
Having felt the urgent need to relax from the hustle and bustle of London light and fashionable resorts, Mr. Lockwood decided to settle in the country wilderness for a while. He chose the place of his voluntary seclusion as an old landed house, the Skvortsa Manor, which stood amidst the hilly moorlands and swamps of northern England. After settling in a new place, Mr. Lockwood found it necessary to pay a visit to the owner of Skvortsov and his only neighbor, Squire Heathcliff, who lived about four miles, in a manor called Wuthering Heights. The host and his home produced a strange impression on the visitor: a gentleman in dress and manners, the appearance of Heathcliff was a pure gypsy; His house resembled the stern habitat of a simple farmer rather than that of a landowner. In addition to the host on the Stormwind Pass, the old grumbling servant Joseph lived; young, charming, but some kind of excessively sharp and complete to all unconcealed contempt Catherine Heathcliff, the daughter-in-law
Ernshaw, Mrs. Dean told us, since ancient times we lived on the Stormwind Pass, and the Lintons on the Mystery of the Starlings. Old Mr. Earnshaw had two children-Hindley’s son, the eldest, and daughter Kathryn. One day, returning from the city, Mr. Earnshaw picked up a gypsy-cut gypsy girl on the road, and brought him into the house. The boy came out and was christened by Heathcliff, and it soon became obvious to everyone that Mr. Earnshaw was much more attached to the foundling than to his own son. Heathcliff, whose character was dominated by far from the most noble traits, used it shamelessly, childishly in every way tyrant Hindley. Strangely enough, a strong friendship was established with Catherine at Heathcliff.
When the old Ernshaw died, Hindley, who by that time had lived in the city for several years, came to the funeral not alone, but with his wife. Together they vividly brought their orders to the Storm Pass, and the young master did not fail to recklessly recoup for the humiliations that he had once borne from his father’s favorite: he now lived on the position of almost a simple worker, Catherine also had a hard time in the care of the near malicious hypocrite Joseph ; the only, perhaps, her joy was the friendship with Heathcliff, gradually growing into an unconscious love for young people still unconscious.
At the Skvortsa Manor, meanwhile, two teenagers lived as well – the master children Edgar and Isabella Lintona. Unlike the savages of the neighbors, they were real gentlemen-educated, educated, unnecessary, perhaps nervous and arrogant. Between the neighbors could not fail to make acquaintance, but Heathcliff, an innocent plebeian, was not accepted into Linton’s company. It would be nothing, but from some point on, Kathryn has become, with undisguised pleasure, spending time in Edgar’s company, neglecting an old friend, and sometimes even mocking him. Heathcliff vowed to take vengeance on the young Linton, and it was not in the nature of this man to throw words into the wind.
Time passed. Hindley Earnshaw had a son – Hareton; the mother of the boy after the birth has fallen ill and no longer got up. Having lost the dearest thing that he had in his life, Hindley gave and went down in front of his eyes: he spent all his days in the countryside, returning with a drunken, irrepressible rampage, terrorizing domestic people.
Relations between Catherine and Edgar gradually grew more serious, and one day, young people decided to get married. It was not easy for Katherine to make such a decision: she knew with her heart and heart that she was doing wrong; Heathcliff was the focus of her greatest thoughts, those without whom the world is unthinkable for her. However, if Heathcliff could be likened to the underground stone layers on which everything is kept, but whose existence does not bring hourly pleasure, she compared her love for Edgar with the spring foliage – you know that the winter will not leave a trace of it, and yet you can not not enjoy it.
Heathcliff, barely aware of the upcoming event, disappeared from the Heights of Storm, and for a long time nothing was heard of him.
Soon the wedding was played; leading Katherine to the altar, Edgar Linton considered himself the happiest of people. The young people were healed in the Skvorts’ Manor, and anyone who saw them at that time could not help but recognize Edgar and Catherine as an exemplary loving couple.
Who knows how long the serene existence of this family would have lasted, but one day a stranger knocked at the Gate of Skvortsov. It was not immediately recognized in him as Heathcliff, for the former uncouth young man now appeared as an adult man with a military bearing and habits of a gentleman. Where he was and what he was doing in those years that have passed since his disappearance, so for all remains a mystery.
Catherine and Heathcliff met as good old friends, while Edgar, who had never liked Heathcliff before, his return aroused displeasure and alarm. And not in vain. His wife overnight lost his peace of mind, so carefully guarded by him. It turned out that all this time Katherine had executed herself as the culprit of the possible death of Heathcliff somewhere in a foreign land, and now his return reconciled her with God and mankind. A childhood friend became even more dear to her than before.
Despite Edgar’s displeasure, Heathcliff was received at the Skvortsov Manor and became a frequent guest there. At the same time, he did not bother to observe the conventions and decorum: he was harsh, rude and straightforward. Heathcliff did not hide that he had returned only to achieve revenge – not only over Hindley Ernshaw, but also over Edgar Linton, who took his life from him with all its meaning. Katherine, he bitterly blamed for the fact that to him, a man with a capital letter, she preferred a weak-willed nervous snivelling; Heathcliff’s words hurt her soul.
To everyone’s perplexity, Heathcliff settled in Grozovoy Pereval, which had long since turned from a landowner’s house into a bar of drunkards and gamblers. The last was on his hand: the loser of all the money Hindley gave Heathcliff a mortgage on the house and estate. Thus, he became the owner of the entire wealth of the family of Earnshaw, and the legal heir of Hindley – Hareton – was left without a penny.
Frequent visits of Heathcliff to the Mind of the Starlings had one unexpected consequence: Isabella Linton, Edgar’s sister, fell in love with him without a memory. Everyone around tried to turn the girl away from this almost unnatural affection for a man with the soul of a wolf, but she remained deaf to persuasion, He did not care about Heathcliff, for he did not care at all and everything except Katherine and his revenge; this is the instrument of this revenge, and he decided to make Isabella, whose father, bypassing Edgar, bequeathed the Manor of Skvortsov. One fine night, Isabella escaped with Heathcliff, and after a while they appeared on the Stormstrider Pass as a husband and wife. There are no words to describe all the humiliations that the young wife Heathcliff was subjected to, and who did not think to hide from it the true motives of his actions. Isabella silently tolerated, in her heart puzzled,
With Catherine Heathcliff did not see from the very day of his escape with Isabella. But one day, after learning that she was seriously ill, he, despite everything, appeared in the Starlings. A painful conversation for both of them, in which the nature of the feelings fed by Catherine and Heathcliff to each other was completely revealed, turned out to be the last for them: the same night Catherine died, giving life to the girl. The girl was named after her mother.
Brother Catherine, robbed by Heathcliff Hindley Earnshaw, soon died too – drank, literally, to death. Even earlier, Isabella’s patience was exhausted, which finally escaped from her husband and settled somewhere near London. There she had a son – Linton Heathcliff.
Twelve or thirteen years passed, during which nothing disturbed the peaceful life of Edgar and Cathy Linton. But here on the Mystery of the Skvortsov came the news of Isabella’s death. Edgar immediately went to London and brought her son from there. It was a spoiled creature, from the mother inherited morbidity and nervousness, and from the father – cruelty and diabolical arrogance.
Cathy, in many respects similar to her mother, immediately became attached to the newly-born cousin, but the next day on the Manor appeared Heathcliff and demanded to give his son. Edgar Linton, of course, could not object to him.
The next three years passed quietly, for all the intercourse between the Grozov Pass and the Mystery of the Starlings was prohibited. When Kathy was sixteen, she still reached the Pass, where she found two of her cousins, Linton Heathcliff and Hareton Ernshaw; The second, however, hardly recognized for a relative – it was too rough and rough he was. As for Linton, then, as her mother used to be, Cathy convinced herself that she loved him. And although the insensitive egoist Linton was not able to respond to her love, Heathcliff intervened in the fate of the young people.
He did not have feelings for Linton, any resemblance to his father’s, but in Kathy saw a reflection of the features of the one that had his whole life possessed by his thoughts, the one whose ghost pursued him now. Therefore, he planned to make sure that both Wuthering Heights and the Mystery of the Starlings, after the death of Edgar Linton and Linton Heathcliff, passed into the possession of Cathy. And for this children it was necessary to marry.
And Heathcliff, despite the will of Katie’s dying father, arranged their marriage. A few days later, Edgar Linton passed away, and Linton Heathcliff soon followed.
There were three of them: the possessed Heathcliff, who despises Hareton and does not find justice for Cathy; the infinitely arrogant and wayward young widow Cathy Heathcliff; and Hareton Ernshaw, the beggar of the ancient family, naively in love with Cathy, who mercilessly tortured the illiterate peasant cousin.
This story was told to Mr. Lockwood by the old Mrs. Dean. It was time, and Mr. Lockwood finally decided to part with the rural seclusion, he thought, forever. But a year later he traveled again in those places and could not help visiting Mrs. Dean.
For a year, it turns out, much has changed in the lives of our heroes. Heathcliff died; before his death he completely lost his sanity, he could neither eat nor sleep, and he wandered all over the hills, invoking the phantom of Catherine. As for Cathy and Hareton, the girl gradually disdained her cousin, warmed to him and finally answered his feelings with reciprocity; The wedding was to be played by the New Year.
In the village cemetery where Mr. Lockwood went before he left, he was told that, no matter what trials fall to the lot of the people who are at rest, now they all sleep peacefully.
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